This month I learned how to invent time and actually make progress towards long-term goals. I feel so productive already in November, and I still have over a week left! Deeply thinking about my long-term goals and setting priorities accordingly has hopefully permanently changed my work balance. The hope with this post is that if…
How was your grant season? Even if it didn’t go exactly how you’d expected it to go, remember, there is no perfect grant proposal, and a great grant application is a submitted application! I know that once Oct 3rd hit, I felt like I was emerging to see the sunlight for the first time in…
I have a secret, guys. After grant season, I am WAY behind on…well, literally everything. There was so much work in Aug/Sept, that I had no time to do much else, and unfortunately, my dedicated writing time was one of the first casualties. The even bigger issue now is that one month after my crazy…
Phew, Marie Curie postdoc fellowship applications were finally submitted almost two weeks ago now, and I just now feel like I am catching my breath! I had more applications to work on this year than ever before, so a lot of the repeating patterns really stood out…which means I get to tell you guys my…
At a recent workshop on manuscript writing, I was very surprised at how many attendees (>25%) said that composing the title was the most difficult or stressful part of writing their manuscript draft. It’s a bit crazy that 15 words, less than 1% of most manuscripts, can cause so much stress. Though it definitely makes…
There is one giant underused opportunity I see in a large majority of the papers I work with, which comes in the conclusion and final paragraph of the paper. To see what this mistake stems from, lets first look again at the overall outline of a paper based on the paper scope (discussed in more…
Many scientists realize that to attract readers, the abstract and introduction need to capture attention and peak interest in a manuscript. To make your manuscript stick out in reader’s minds though, which is key to building your citations, that interest needs to be maintained throughout the paper. Unfortunately, the next section a reader gets to…
The discussion can be a sticking point for many manuscript writers because it seems to be a free for all with no easy pattern for composing it – but there are actually 6 key parts that need to be included! While it is true that each research project is different – meaning that different parts…
This is according to a new opinion piece published in PNAS, at least, but we already agree with them or we wouldn’t be here! The article I am referring to: Benjamin Freeling, Zoë A. Doubleday, and Sean D. Connell. Opinion: How can we boost the impact of publications? Try better writing. PNAS January 8, 2019 116 (2) 341-343 Click here for…
October 2019 Roundup
Happy November! The weather is dreary here in Switzlerand, but the short days and lack of sun are a good thing for writing marathons. October again served up some nice Twitter threads on writing, some interesting tidbits on the peer-review process, and an article responding to the Comrac McCarthy one I shared last month. For…
Read More